Over the past 22 years, Cascadia Capital has helped dozens of healthcare, retail, technology, and other companies find buyers.
Now, the Seattle-based investment banking company is preparing to buy it on its own. Cascadia Capital, led by Michael Butler and Jamie Boyd, filed on Thursday in the name of Cascadia Acquisition Corp to raise $150 million for a new special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).
Target? Acquiring an emerging technology company in a field called “Industry 4.0” by long-term investment banking professionals.
“Today, Industry 4.0 is regarded as the fourth industrial revolution, which uses the building blocks of computing and artificial intelligence, deep learning, computer vision, the Internet of Things (“IoT”), gene sequencing, energy storage and blockchain And other advanced technologies, changing the physical, digital and biological worlds,” the company said in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing“As robotics, automation, and artificial intelligence (“RAAI”) technologies span across various fields and end markets, we believe that civilization will achieve a new level of major progress and innovation.”
It is interesting to see Cascadia enter the SPAC field, partly because Butler and Boyd have spent most of their careers helping other entrepreneurs find buyers and sellers in various industries. But for those who help brokers enter the competition, this is not completely abnormal.
Seattle venture capital firm Frazier Healthcare Partners established SPAC last fall to acquire a company in the life sciences field.
However, it is particularly interesting that under these circumstances, SPACs composed of investment professionals may eventually compete with customers. In other words, they can pick out the best deal imaginatively. The Cascadia acquisition instructions in the SEC filings:
“Our managers and directors may be responsible for providing acquisition opportunities to customers of Cascadia Capital or our other affiliates. Therefore, our affiliates and their respective customers may compete with us in the same industry and as our initial business combination objectives. Division’s business combination opportunities. If any of them decides to pursue any such opportunities, we may not be able to obtain such opportunities.”
Via email, Butler declined to comment on their motivation to join SPAC, citing the so-called “quiet period.”
Nonetheless, the team’s M&A experience provides Cascadia Acquisition with a unique perspective to investigate potential acquisitions. The company wrote: “We believe that our management team’s multiple procurement channels and deep network of relationships, as well as our affiliation with Cascadia Capital, coupled with our capital market and trading experience, provide us with a competitive advantage.”
In addition to Boyd and Butler, the company’s directors include Edgar Lee, a former executive of Oaktree Capital Management; Scott Prince, CEO of APS Logistics Holdco; and Arun Venkatadri, senior product manager of Aurora, who worked at Uber and Lyft , And founded Extremis Ventures last year.
Last year, as capital flowed to newly established entities and entrepreneurs using financial instruments to enter the open market faster, SPACs, also known as blank check companies, reappeared.Due to additional regulation, the SPAC market has recently cooled down Review. even so, SPAC Insider So far this year, 395 SPACs have been tracked, up from 248 last year. In 2019, only 59 SPACs were released.
Seattle-based online pet custody market Rover went public this week through SPAC, and Seattle biotech upstart Nautilus Biotechnology (which was also listed through SPAC trading this year) has soared this week after its shareholding was disclosed by Amazon.